October 29, 2007

Last week I had the good fortune to see a women’s volleyball game at the University of Texas, and lo, the women were tall, strong, fast, and tough. I am a nancy pansy wusswuss when it comes to physical pain, as any of you who have seen me stub my toe already know (Average Toe Stub Recovery Time: 6 1/2 minutes, assuming someone is there to rub my back while holding my hand), so I was especially impressed by how nonchalant they were about stopping 80 mile an hour volleyballs with their bare arms. UT swept Nebraska, the first time the Lady Cornhuskers have been swept since 1997, so that was pretty exciting. And? There’s this thing that Longhorn fans do? Where they make a sort of horn shape with their hands? And then they wiggle their hand in the direction of the team they don’t like and hiss? Hilarious. I spent the whole weekend Longhorn Hand Hissing everything that displeased me. The dog was unnerved.

October 25, 2007

When Cristian was a lad of 18, he ordered his first set of personal checks. Cristian saw the moment as a benchmark – a fledgling step from the nest, away from a childhood stifled by financial stability, into a much more exciting adult life featuring precarious insolvency and cans of beans.

You can imagine his excitment when, a week later, the checks arrived.

Alas, Cristian had not thought about the importance of writing clearly when filling out official forms. He used his trademark lefty scrawl, which resembles nothing so much as the handwriting of a bounden slave in the trammels of opium addiction.

It fell to an unfortunate clerk, a faceless hero whose name we shall never know, to decipher each letter of Cristian’s name. How long he struggled we can only guess, but we do know what he came up with:

Creyshan Vilklabas.

And that, my friends, is the story of Creyshan Vilklabas, AKA Cristian Villalobos, AKA the guy who will come up to you, take a scrap of paper out of his own pocket, covered with his own handwriting, and ask you if you can decipher it for him.

October 16, 2007

Fluppy has a sprained paw. Fluppy has a sprained paw. Fluppy has a sprained paw.

Forgive me, but I can’t help but play with the phonetics of that sentence. Fluppy has a sprained paw. It sounds a little Seussian, a little Sesame Street, but nothing so much as if it came out of one of the Maisy books. It certainly sounds pathetic. Flups exudes a certain baseline level of pathos anytime she’s not at the park, roving free, but with the sore ear and sprained paw she’s got going on right now, my god, my god, her eyes are bottomless.

All I know is, the next time she gets sick, I’m cutting out the middle man. I’ll make a healing money poultice of shredded dollar bills and tears (ours, from watching our bank balance flatline, and/or looking into Fluppy’s sad, sad eyes). At least then I won’t have to spend 2 1/2 weeknight hours at the vet, in the waiting room, listening to a woman explain to her dog that Jesus will heal him, Jesus will make him whole. And then discovering that said dog was in to have his impacted anal glands dug out.

This, of course, is really good news for that dog, because Jesus’ speciality is ass-covering. That’s like, His whole schtick.

October 15, 2007

The day you post happily about wanting another dog, your current dog will sprout a gory, bloody, pus-filled growth on her ear. Two days and $112 dollars later, she will mysteriously injure herself whilst playing alone in the yard. Dog, you will say, what the hell? Could you not cluster your injuries together and at least spare us the extra examination fee? $45 is a king’s ransom in rawhide.

One week to the day after you publicly embarrass your significant other for needlessly setting off a REALLY FUCKING LOUD alarm system in the house you are sitting, you will set off said alarm yourself. The alarm will continue to beep and shriek at random intervals for the next 8 hours. Said S.O. will offer very small doses of extremely cold comfort as you struggle to contain the noise/comfort the dog/convince the Brinks people you belong in the house.

You spend much too much time mooning over pictures from your cousin’s visit, wondering why you didn’t just chain her to your radiator when you had the chance:

October 11, 2007

Cristian and I are rental-house hunting, which is exciting, because once we get a yard, we’re going to get another dog. Two dogs! What riches. I remember this feeling from the lead-up to the adoption of Fluppicus, the happy anticipation, the do-goodery feeling of knowing the dog we save from the pound will go on to lead the kind of life that children in the third world can only dream of.

Kidding! But not really.

I am slightly consumed with the naming opportunity that this new dog adoption presents. Fluppy’s name was given to her by a wonderful woman, a woman who rescued Flups from death by mange, housebroke her, spayed her, and then handed her over to me. I can’t say enough good things about Debby, and when Debby suggested, with tears on her face, that I keep the name she gave this puppy she had loved and cared for, I couldn’t say no.

But. It’s a ridiculous name, embarrassing to tell strangers who ask, embarrassing to shout at the dog park, and it needs to be repeated at least 3 times before anyone can ever hear it correctly. My vet techs have made fun of it TO MY FACE. It’s a clunker. Finally, after 7 years and two dogs, I get to pick a name.

Cristian’s main contribution to the naming discussion so far? He wants to name the dog Shittles. Shittles. Or Bail Jumper, and call it BJ for short.

So I’m opening the discussion to wider debate. I would love to know what your current dogs, past dogs, neighbor’s dogs are named. Send them my way, help me pass the time, for the love of god please help me come up with SOMETHING that will take Cristian off his Shittles kick. It’s kind of making my head explode.